Double Star

could not even use a hearing device because the eighth nerve was dead. Part of the time he could cue by lips but that is not always possible. He directed the production himself and he timed it perfectly. I have seen him deliver a line, walk away — then whirl around and snap out a retort to a line that he had never heard, precisely on the timing.

This was like that. I knew my part and I played it. If they blew it, that was their lookout.

But it did not help my morale that there were never less than half a dozen wands leveled at me the whole time. I kept telling myself that they wouldn't burn me down for a slip. After all, I was just a poor stupid human being and at the very least they would give me a passing mark for effort. But I didn't believe it.

After what seemed like days — but was not, since the whole ceremony times exactly one ninth of Mars' rotation — after an endless time, we ate. I don't know what and perhaps it is just as well. It did not poison me.

After that the elders made their speeches, I made my acceptance speech in answer, and they gave me my name and my wand. I was a Martian.

I did not know how to use the wand and my name sounded like a leaky faucet, but from that instant on it was my legal name on Mars and I was legally a blood member of the most aristocratic family on the planet — exactly fifty-two hours after a ground hog down on his luck had spent his last half-Imperial buying a drink for a stranger in the bar of Casa Maсana.

I guess this proves that one should never pick up strangers.

I got out as quickly as possible. Dak had made up a speech for me in which I claimed proper necessity for leaving at once and they let me go. I was nervous as a man upstairs in a sorority house because there was no longer ritual to guide me. I mean to say even casual social behavior was still hedged around with airtight and risky custom and I did not know the moves. So I recited my excuse and headed out. `Rrreash and another elder went with me and I chanced playing with another pair of the kids when we were outside — or maybe the same pair. Once I reached the gates the two elders said good-by in squeaky English and let me go out alone; the gates closed behind me and I re-swallowed my heart.

The Rolls was waiting where they had let me out; I hurried down, a door opened, and I was surprised to see that Penny was in it alone. But not displeased. I called out, «Hi, Curly Top! I made it!»

«I knew you would.»

I gave a mock sword salute with my wand and said, «Just call me Kkkahjjjerrr» — spraying the front rows with the second syllable.

«Be careful with that thing!» she said nervously.

I slid in beside her on the front seat and asked, «Do you know how to use one of these things?» The reaction was setting in and I felt exhausted but gay; I wanted three quick drinks and a thick steak, then to wait up for the critics' reviews.

«No. But do be careful.»

«I think all you have to do is to press it here,» which I did, and there was a neat two-inch hole in the windshield and the car wasn't pressurized any longer.

Penny gasped. I said, «Gee, I'm sorry. Ill put it away until Dak can coach me.»

She gulped. «It's all right. Just be careful where you point it.» She started wheeling the car and I found that Dak was not the only one with a heavy hand on the damper.

Wind was whistling in through the hole I had made. I said, «What's the rush? I need some time to study my lines for the press conference. Did you bring them? And where are the others?» I had forgotten completely the driver we had grabbed; I had not thought about him from the time the gates of the nest opened.

«No. They couldn't come.»

«Penny, what's the matter? What's happened?» I was wondering if I could possibly take a press conference without coaching. Perhaps I could tell them a little about the adoption; I wouldn't have to fake that.

«It's Mr. Bonforte — they've found him.»

Six

I had not noticed until then that she had not once called me «Mr. Bonforte.» She could not, of course, for I was no longer he; I was again Lorrie Smythe, that actor chap they had hired to stand in for him.

I sat back and sighed, and let myself relax. «So it's over at last — and we got away with it.» I felt a great burden lift off me; I had not known how heavy it was until I put it down. Even my «lame» leg stopped aching. I reached over and patted Penny's hand on the wheel and said in my own voice, «I'm glad it's over. But I'm going to miss having you around, pal. You're a trouper. But even the best run ends and the company breaks up. I hope I'll see you again sometime.»

«I hope so too.»

«I suppose Dak has arranged some shenanigan to keep me under cover and sneak me back into the Tom Paine?»

«I don't know.» Her voice sounded odd and I gave her a quick glance and saw that she was crying. My heart gave a skip. Penny crying? Over us separating? I could not believe it and yet I wanted to. One might think that, between my handsome features and cultivated manners, women would find me irresistible, but it is a deplorable fact that all too many of them have found me easy to resist. Penny had seemed to find it no effort at all.

«Penny,» I said hastily, «why all the tears, hon? You'll wreck this car.»

«I can't help it.»

«Well — put me in it. What's wrong? You told me they had got him back; you didn't tell me anything else.» I had a sudden horrid but logical suspicion. «He was alive — wasn't he?»

«Yes — he's alive — but, oh, they've hurt him!» She started to sob and I had to grab the wheel.

She straightened up quickly. «Sorry.»

«Want me to drive?»

«I'll be all right. Besides, you don't know how — I mean you aren't supposed to know how to drive.»

«Huh? Don't be silly. I do know how and it no longer matters that — » I broke off, suddenly realizing that it might still matter. If they had roughed up Bonforte so that it showed, then he could not appear in public in that shape — at least not only fifteen minutes after being adopted into the Kkkah nest. Maybe I would have to take that press conference and depart publicly, while Bonforte would be the one they would sneak aboard. Well, all right — hardly more than a curtain call. «Penny, do Dak and Rog want me to stay in character for a bit? Do I play to the reporters? Or don't I?»

«I don't know. There wasn't time.»

We were already approaching the stretch of godowns by the field, and the giant bubble domes of Goddard City were in sight. «Penny, slow this car down and talk sense. I've got to have my cues.»

The driver had talked — I neglected to ask whether or not the bobby-pin treatment had been used. He had then been turned loose to walk back but had not been deprived of his mask; the others had barreled back to Goddard City, with Dak at the wheel. I felt lucky to have been left behind;voyageurs should not be allowed to drive anything but spaceships.

They went to the address the driver had given them, in Old Town under the original bubble. I gathered that it was the sort of jungle every port has had since the Phoenicians sailed around the shoulder of Africa, a place of released transportees, prostitutes, monkeypushers, rangees, and other dregs — a neighborhood where policemen travel only in pairs.

The information they had squeezed out of the driver had been correct but a few minutes out of date. The room had housed the prisoner, certainly, for there was a bed in it which seemed to have been occupied continuously for at least a week, a pot of coffee was still hot — and wrapped in a towel on a shelf was an old- fashioned removable denture which Clifton identified as belonging to Bonforte. But Bonforte himself was missing and so were his captors.

They had left there with the intention of carrying out the original plan, that of claiming that the kidnapping